PAT: I suspect that's what most students today, the younger students expect.

BILL: I would not be surprised because that's the experience they're having before and after they arrive on campus.

Slide: Current Environment in Higher Education

BILL: Well, let's switch to a general discussion of the current environment in higher education and this is just for some context for everyone. This is also probably no surprise to anyone, but budget constraints are pretty much something we are all dealing with. The economy and the recession which good news is we're out of the recession, the bad news is we haven't felt that yet. I saw reports in the Chronicle this week of situations in Wisconsin and Massachusetts that look like they're pretty severe and I can tell you, in Colorado, we are also facing budget reductions because of the situation with the state economy. So we're all facing budget constraints.

At the same time, probably everyone would say that they have insufficient technology resources to do all the things that they want to do, or perhaps all the things that their campus expects them to do. Because while we're in those kinds of resource constraints, we still want to attract quality students, we still want to improve the academic experience, we're still being asked to provide and we want to provide increased services, and we want to meet the student or the parents' expectations. As we said, they are coming to our institutions now with a pretty high level of expectation for electronic services and pretty responsive services.

PAT: I see we had a comment in the chat box saying that they wish the administrations at various institutions would operate as quickly as the corporate world does in adopting some of this technology. But I think, Bill, one of the problems that institutions have had in the past, at least, has been retaining trained IT people. It seems that, as soon as institutions will get people trained, they'd be off into the corporate world where they can make more money. I mean, now that we've had sort of this experience with the dot-com world, is that still happening, or has it slowed down? Can institutions hold on to people a little longer? What's happening?

BILL: Well, Pat, for a lot of years, institutions were training grounds for technology staff to get their basic training and then go out and, you know, find better paying jobs in private industry. We have all experienced that and for many years we had difficulty retaining staff and attracting new staff into our vacant positions. I think in the last twelve months, I know we've seen that here at Colorado State, we're not seeing people leaving like they were leaving, and we're seeing much better applicant pools for the positions that we do have available. So it looks like it may have turned around. I don't know that that's all that good news because it's because of the bad economy and yet, we seem to be benefiting by that.

PAT: So a little bright spot in the bad economy.

BILL: Perhaps.

PAT: Might help us catch up.

BILL: Exactly. Perhaps.

Slide: Institutional Culture

BILL: Well, here's some interesting statistics I've found from a recent survey that was published and 75% of institutions who responded this survey said that they value and leverage technology. 83% of them said that they are student-centered, and 87% of prefer Web-based solutions. So that gives you a real indication of where technology is fitting into this picture of delivering student services. But caution is also in this survey: 38% of institutions report that they adopt change easily. I'll be everyone out there can identify with that. Change is really difficult to come by but there's high desirability for change and delivering technology solutions.

PAT: And one of our attendees points out that it often takes different skill sets to use technology and that could be some of the reticence that institutional staff have in adopting changes.

BILL: Exactly. There's a lot of times that you have to take a change in the way you do your business, when you start to make innovations in technology.

Slide: Colorado State University:

BILL: I thought I'd tell you a little bit about what we're doing at Colorado State University. We are experienced a continued enrollment growth. That's good news. We continue to expand our student services and move towards providing more electronic services for our students and we're pleased about that. But, as I said before, we're also under budget constraints and we have to make do with what we have available to us.

We are at the beginning stage of a project to replace our student information systems, and so that plays into, you know, what goes into my thinking and talking today because of the experience that we're going through here. We're hoping that we will gain benefit and additional functionality from an integrated student information system. We're hoping that we'll be able to provide more self-service to students through the Web and be able to do it with an interface system. I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute, but let's get to some basics here.

Slide: What is a Student Information System?

BILL: Let's talk about what is a student information system. And perhaps this is basic, but let me just use it as a starting point. Student information system is a database or databases containing information about students. We use that database to support the services we provide to students. We use that database or databases to maintain a student's educational record. I'll come back to educational record in just a moment.

Slide: Student Information Systems

BILL: But when you talk about a student information system, these are the usual modules you'll find. Perhaps you might consider these the essential modules of a student information system: the marketing and the recruitment module where the prospecting for students goes on and the recruitment of students; the admissions module, where we're able to process applications and admit students and track their status through an admissions cycle; financial aid, of course, where we provide financial assistance with federal, state and institutional financial aid; records and registration, some would say this is the core of a student information system. It certainly is a key part to it, because here's where the transcript and the academic functions occur with registering for courses and graduation and such; student billing is a is a key part of a student information system, because you have to be able to calculate your charges and present bills to students so that they can pay their charges; academic advising is usually also on this list to support the student in their educational program.

I would mention that extra and supplemental modules sometimes within a student information system, sometimes they might be just outside an information system, might be housing, loan management, degree audit. You see them either in or outside of a student information system.

Slide: Integrating or Interfacing

BILL: I talked a moment ago about integrating or interfacing. And let me try to explain what that is because it's an important concept for those of us who work in information systems. Information is common to multiple parts of the student system, such as an address, so, of course, the registrar has to send information, has to have a student address. The accounts receivable department has to have a student address so that they can send bills. And financial aid has to have a student address so they can send the award letters and etc. An integrated information system means that a change in one place automatically updates information in the other place. An interfaced system means that a program or a person must update or re-enter the new data in another place.

Slide: Example

BILL: Now, let me show you an example of what I mean. If a student provides a new address to the registrar, the registrar will update the records database. Now, of course, the student billing system needs that address as well. If it's an integrated system, the system will pull the new address from the records database and it only has to be recorded once. If it's an interfaced system, then the system will have to update the billing system from the records system and usually this is occurring in a batch environment or overnight, so you oftentimes have a delay of twenty-four hours or more in order to do that.

PAT: You know, Bill, I think what happens with the distance students, oftentimes, is that their records are kept in a separate database from the main campus student information system. They might be off in continuing education or, you know, some other unit on the campus. And they are not interfaced or integrated, and it can cause some real problems. Oftentimes students are having to register at both places, pay separate tuitions, get separate student services. And I think when there were a small number of students involved, it wasn't such a big deal, but now as campuses are getting larger and larger online enrollment, and some of these people are also people who are campus-based students, it gets very confusing for the student.

BILL: Well, that's a real good point, Pat, and that's one of the real reasons for the need to interface, at least. And because a lot of continuing ed departments or distance education providers are doing things that are quite different from what the traditional delivery of courses and credits takes place, they've had to create their own systems. Most of them try to interface — I know we certainly do here at Colorado State — try to interface with our main system because we want the credits on the transcript and we want to be able to bill a student from a central billing department. So you've got to take the unique parts and integrate them with the main campus system. Sometimes, you're absolutely right, it is not integrated nor interfaced, and so it runs totally independent. Then you've got a lot of duplication of functions, like duplication of billing and duplication of registration and record-keeping and the whole possibility there.

PAT: It's very confusing. But I think it's getting better. I understand that some of the newer systems are taking into consideration the different kinds of information that needs to be kept on distance students.

BILL: Well, that's right and, as well, institutions are considering the needs of their distance education or their continuing education departments as they design their new systems. That's what we're doing at Colorado State. We've got our continuing ed people on the project team helping us to determine the functional specifications for our new system. So they're being brought into it as we think about new systems.

PAT: That's great.

Slide: Student System Software Providers

BILL: Now that I'm talking about new systems, let's talk about who some of the student system software providers are. And here's a list of a few. These are the ones that we typically run into in the marketplace. SCT has a product called Banner. They have another product called PLUS. PeopleSoft has the Student Administration System. There's Datatel, there's CARS. And then, actually, you gotta consider that many student information systems are homegrown on their own campus. They may even started out as a proprietary software and then became modified over time to become their own homegrown version.

Slide: Cost of a New Student Information System

BILL: As we talk about a new student information system we want to talk about what are some of what are some of the considerations when you think about the cost of a new student information system. I know this is something that, you know, people talk about it at conferences and they talked about on their campuses, and we hear and read about horror stories of the cost of a student information system and we're usually talking about large, large dollars.

There's a lot of considerations in the cost of a student information system. Mostly it's based on the size of your institution, the number of students that are enrolled there or the way your information technology department is structured with the computers and the platforms, etc. There's the direct cost of the software license, which is what you pay to acquire the software.

There's the ongoing cost of annual maintenance, which is usually a percentage of the software license, and this can be quite significant, ongoing cost in a student information system budget. So much you must consider the ongoing cost of maintenance, and you want that maintenance, because that's what keeps your system current with new regulations that come out, particularly in the financial aid department, that every year the Department of Ed issues new regulations and you don't want to be having to make those changes on your own campus; you want that being done by your software provider.

You've got to also consider the cost of system implementation. And this is a huge cost. Many times sometimes five times or more the cost of the actual software itself because the implementation is something that you can't take for granted. It's not something that's plug-and-play. It takes a lot of effort both internally and most people hire external consultants to assist with an implementation and the training that takes place on campus with a new system. You probably have a project team itself which you have to determine the cost of that. Your own staff may be assigned to a project team and, you know, I think, in an ideal situation, they're released from current responsibilities, but they may be asked to do current and project at the same time.

And then an implementation timeline is another factor: the longer a project takes, the more it costs. So there are a lot of factors that really go into play when you talk about the cost of a new student information system.

Slide: Replace or Rebuild?

BILL: One more consideration, and we talked about this at Colorado State, is do we replace or do we rebuild our information system. And in that kind of a question you have to consider your maintenance costs, what it costs you to enhance the program, what it costs you to provide additional services, whether you've got the staff to do it and the resources to do it. And remember, we started talking about the limited resources and the constraints that we have and most people say they don't have sufficient technology resources to do everything they are expected to do. I think this will be a factor, as you think about whether you rebuild or replace.

A few years ago, there were additional factors, such as Y2K, was a very critical factor for a lot of institutions that changed their student information system, because their old system was not compliant with Y2K and so they made the decision to convert prior to Y2K. Other schools, like Colorado State, made their current system Y2K-compliant and carried on for a few more years before facing the replace option.

Slide: Options for Web-based Services

BILL: Now that we're talking about options, most of us want to provide services over the Web, and there are a couple of options for providing Web-based services. Certainly, Web-based services is are a functionality that's included in most new systems. It's actually designed right into the system. So that's one benefit of replacing a student information system if your current system doesn't have it or support it. But there are other ways to Web-enable your existing system. There's middleware that some of it as simple as a screen scraper, that will present what's on a database screen to the Web. It's not always an elegant solution, but it does allow you to Web-enable.

Other more sophisticated middleware will let you actually form a gateway to your database. And then you can actually write new Web interfaces for your services. I don't really want to be too technical here, and I can't get much more technical than this myself, but, you know, this is where the conversation turns pretty technical, when you start talking about Web-enabling your current system. Web portals are becoming another method that interface with legacy systems and provide a way to do this. So there are a few options, but, mostly I think we want to go directly to our database and present information from the database in our service models.

PAT: So it's good to know that you don't have to replace your student information system with something new in order to make Web-enable the services. You just have to just have an interface to do that.

BILL: That's right, Pat. You can find alternate solutions to replacing and we've been successful with Colorado State. You know, I can tell you about Colorado State because that's where I'm at and we've had some enhancements that have allowed us to Web-enable a number of our services before we replace our system.

PAT: That's great.

Question: What SIS does your institution currently have?

BILL: Well, we want to bring the audience back into this and find out something about your institution and ask you what SIS — what student information system — does your institution currently have? Now, it's okay if you don't know, because we've got a button for you. And you may otherwise know that you've got a homegrown system or that you're running PeopleSoft or SCT Banner or SCT Plus, and if you don't know the difference, just pick one of those, if you know that it's SCT but you don't know which one it is, or Datatel or CARS, and we'll do a quick little tally on that. So punch one of those and let's see what this starts to look like.

PAT: Well while those results are coming in, Bill, I mean, have most of these companies been around for a long time or was there a time when most schools have to build their own systems?

BILL: Well, that's right. I'd say these are relatively young companies in terms of student information systems. Through the '70s and into the '80s, there just weren't any providers of software, student information systems. Then as the '80s and '90s, then we see more and more companies who saw this as a market for them for their products. SCT, for example, has been providing student systems for twenty years now. And PeopleSoft has been a company that's been around for many years. They've got fewer years in higher education. They came in in about the mid '90s with software student software for higher education. There's been others who have come and gone. I mean, companies have started and then there's been mergers and acquisitions. It's been an interesting market to watch.

Results of Question

PAT: Okay, Sue, do we have any results?

SUE: We do. And it's interesting. I realize now we didn't have an "other" category because Kevin Webb says they have Hobsons.

PAT: Oh, I see.

SUE: So we weren't inclusive here, but look what we found. Mostly homegrown followed closely by SCT Banner. Then Datatel.

PAT: Okay. Do we have a question asking how many have Web-based student services that are integrated with their SIS? We didn't ask that, did we?

SUE: No.

BILL: No. Well, that'll have to be for next time.

PAT: Maybe we can ask a yes/no question.

SUE: We could.

PAT: How many people who answered the question on their SIS have a Web-enabled services that integrate with their SIS systems? Answer yes or no. Give them just a couple of minutes there.

BILL: Well, that's not surprising that in particularly when you've got such a large percentage of home grown I'd say that's probably where most of the difficulty would be if you're going to be interfacing your Web services, because homegrown systems are probably not very current.

PAT: I know we were working with one institution recently that could not store an e-mail address, for example. And so to create Web-based services it just was not something in the cards.

SUE: But look at the results so far. I mean, we've got, what? Four to one, at the moment, saying yes.

PAT: That's great.

BILL: That is great, because people are finding a way to provide interfaces. I saw one comment go through here; they call it a veneer. That works for me.

PAT: Okay.

SUE: Please click on the green "yes" button to say that you do have SIS-supported Web services.

PAT: Okay.

Slide: What is an Educational Record?

BILL: All right. Well, I want to turn the corner now in this presentation and we talked about using our student information system for maintaining an educational record. And that's a kind of a key to where we're going with the topic in talking about what we can do with an educational record in providing services. So let's go to "What is an educational record?" And in one respect, it's everything that an institution keeps and maintains concerning its student. Examples are going to be personal information, academic information, financial information, disciplinary information, like that.

Slide: What isn't an Educational Record?

BILL: However, not everything is an educational record, so what is not an educational record? Information that's maintained by an individual, so this is different from an institution, if an individual maintains a record, that's not part of the educational record, like a faculty record, or a class record, like that. There are other types of information maintained by the institution that's not an educational record, like employment and health records and police records and counseling records. Those are not part of the educational record.

Slide: Quiz Time!

BILL: Okay, I hope you're all with me. I'm going to ask you a quiz now. We're going to start with a couple of quiz questions here. And the first quiz question has to do with whether you can release information from a student's record without their consent. So let's state the question. "A student's written permission is required before information from their educational record can be released." And let's use the yes, no and question mark for true, false and I don't know. So go ahead and give your answers to this question. And as we see these things coming in. I'm trying to answer myself. I'll keep up with the presentation and give my own answers on here.

PAT: Then we can cheat, Bill, because we see your answer.

SUE: That's right.

BILL: Oh, no. Well, I'm not putting it in the chat room.

PAT: So we do have some people are not sure.

BILL: All right. Well, listen, let me tell you while you continue to mark true, false or I don't know, the answer to this question is false. A student's written permission is not required before information from their educational record can be released. And that's because there are different types of information that's in an educational record. All of this is governed by a federal law concerning rights and privacy. It's called FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.

Slide: What is FERPA?

BILL: This Act, twenty-five years old now, more than twenty-five years old, concerns educational records and provides the students access to their own record and protects the release of the record except as provided. And so that's probably the key to the answer above, that some information can be released without the student's permission. I'm going to tell you about that, but I'm going to ask you another quiz question.

Slide: Quiz Time

BILL: So here's the next question. "A student's directory information may be released in compliance with FERPA without the student's consent." So go ahead and say yes for true, no for false, and question mark for I don't know. And I'm not going to vote this time because I'm not understanding if my answers are showing or not.

PAT: See what happens.

BILL: We'll see what happens. And I'm not listening to the time lag between the audio and the pictures here, but I know that I'm speaking before you're hearing me, so there might be an issue with that, too. As you're marking these in and it looks like people are saying true, and that's more true than false, and that is correct. You may release a student's directory information without their consent — because it's considered directory, and I'm going to talk about that.

Slide: Directory Information

BILL: Directory information is what we define by the institution — it's always defined, and examples are name, address — I'm going to talk more about that in just a minute. Directory information is deemed harmless if released. That's the basic concept about it. You can release it without the student's consent, but you do have to provide an opportunity for the student to request that it be withheld, and then, of course, you have to honor that request.

Slide: Directory Information Examples

BILL: The next slide we're going to show you what directory information is. This is a typical list of directory information: the student's name, address, telephone, e-mail address, enrollment status, field of study, dates of attendance, date and place of birth, photograph, degrees and awards. A lot of schools are going to ID card systems that capture an electronic image of the student, a digital image, and that may also be determined. Now, just because it may be directory information, that's entirely up to every institution to actually define whether it is or not, and some schools say that e-mail is directory; other schools say that e-mail is not directory. So every institution makes their own decision about this.

Slide: Prohibited from Directory Information

BILL: There are a few things that you may not call directory information, and that would include the student's social security number or their ID number, race, ethnicity and nationality, gender and grades may not be defined as directory information. So the concept here is directory information you're free to release that. You can disclose it without the student's consent unless the student has said, "I don't want it disclosed."

Slide: Personally Identifiable Information

BILL: The other kind of information is called personally identifiable information. And that is basically everything else that's not directory information. It's considered a list of personal characteristics that would make the student's identity traceable. It would include grades and courses and test scores and other family members' information such as parents' address and things like that. That's all considered personally identifiable information and it may not be released without the consent of the student.

Slide: What is a "Record?"

BILL: The other thing you want to know is that it doesn't matter what form you keep it in, if it is in computer media, or if it's handwritten or printed or microfilm, the media does not matter; a record is a record.

Slide: What can be released?

BILL: So, to summarize, what can you release? You can release directory information if the student has not withheld it and you can release personally identifiable information as long as you have prior consent to do so.

Slide: Quiz Time

BILL: And we're going to talk about this prior consent a little bit more, but first, I'm going to ask you to answer another question. And the question is "Parents can obtain confidential information from their students' academic record." Is that true, false or you don't know? And, again, use the yes, no and question mark buttons. "Parents can obtain confidential information from their students' academic record." So based on what we just talked about, true, false or otherwise?

PAT: And lots of no's coming in.

BILL: I'm watching the thing come in and it's coming in predominantly no. And that is correct. The answer here is false. And this is a source of frustration and for parents and probably for most service providers in higher education. How many of you have encountered the student or, the parent that says, "What do you mean, I can't have access to my student's record? I pay the bill." But when the law was written, all of the rights of protection for the student's record belonged to the student in a post-secondary educational institution, which is higher education. Now, parents have ways of establishing that the student is a dependent and they may establish a right to access the record but, just on the basis of parental relationship, the parents don't have automatic access to their record.

Slide: Exceptions to Prior Consent

BILL: When we talk about exceptions to prior consent, there are a list of them. And starts with school officials who have a legitimate educational interest. That would be faculty, administrators, service providers, things of that nature; federal, state, local authorities who might be involved in an audit or an evaluation; it it's in connection with financial aid, such as enrollment verification; none of these things require consent from the student. A judicial order or a subpoena and here's where the parents of the dependent students, if they can demonstrate that the student is their dependent, based on IRS regulations, then they can have access. And of course, to the student them self, you can release information to the student and the student can release it to whomever they wish.

So that's another way that we usually talk to parents and students about gaining information is, parents, gain your information from talking to your student, and students, please provide the information to your parents. So we'd rather not be the middleman on this.

PAT: I'll bet there are some allowance checks that might be withheld on occasion parents don't get the information they need.

BILL: Well, that's good. That's between the parent and the student.

PAT: That's right.

Slide: Quiz Time

BILL: Okay. One more quiz for you. Let's talk about faculty. "Faculty have a right to inspect education records of any student attending your college without giving them a reason." I'm sorry, I didn't say that very well. I'll restate it. "Faculty have a right to inspect education records of any student attending your college without giving a reason." True, false or I don't know. And let's see how these votes come in. Because we were talking about school officials with a legitimate educational interest, and I said faculty would be a school official with a legitimate educational interest, but in direct response to this question, the answer is false. A faculty must have a legitimate educational interest in order to inspect an educational record.

Slide: Who are School Officials with Legitimate Educational Interest?

BILL: If they are teaching a course and the student's in the class, that's legitimate educational interest. If they are an advisor and they're going to be advising the student, that's also an educational interest. You've got to define this in your policy, but it can include faculty, administrators and service providers.

PAT: But, now, Bill, an advisor can't see the records of students that are not his or her advisees, is that correct?

BILL: Not according to FERPA. And here's where some information systems will help you and some are not able to. Because if you can restrict access to only the students who are in a particular college or in a particular department or on an advisor's list, then you can protect that. But otherwise, a lot of times, when you give an advisor or a faculty person access to your information system, you've given them access to everything, so you have to employ other controls such as an acceptable use statement, supervisory control and audits, in order to fully implement this system. You know, the basic.

PAT: And that's where these authorization authentication programs come in and are so complex, I guess.

BILL: They are pretty complex, and they basically define what kind of student or which specific students you can have access to. But, like I said, most information systems do not have that level of access control. And so you have to enforce this on some other level, such as, you know, requiring that anyone that gets access to the information system signs a statement that says, "I will only use this access in an authorized manner."

PAT: I see.

BILL: When you get access to an information system, you're not supposed to go fishing and hunting for, you know, throughout the system; you're only supposed to use it the way you're supposed to be used.

PAT: Though as more student services get integrated into student information systems, that before working on those services need to think about FERPA and how that affects what they're doing.

BILL: That's correct.

Slide: FERPA and the Patriot Act

BILL: Well, there's one more recent change to the laws here that I wanted to remind everyone of and that's the USA Patriot Act, which was signed into law in November, I believe, but last fall. And this new law adds a new exception to FERPA. It basically expands the health and safety exception, which is another condition that information can be disclosed without the student's consent. In this case it allows for access to student records under a "terrorism investigation" label and gives federal and state authorities the ability to access records. It further prohibits the disclosure of the request to the student and to others. So, unlike a federal subpoena or unlike a court order for access to a record where the rules permit us and, in fact, require us to notify the student that someone has accessed their record, the new USA Patriot Act prohibits the disclosure when it's specified like that in the order.

So this is a new component and, you know, in some ways, it changes the rules for access to records, and there is a fair amount of debate going on about, you know, the wisdom of this, but, you know, I think everyone understands the nature of the USA Patriot Act and this is the impact of that act on our privacy laws. You may have other questions about that, and if you do feel free to put them into the chat room.

Slide: Online Services

BILL: Want to move towards closure on this, and go back to what we started with, and that's online services. We've talked that online services are really useful for distance learners and we've said that they're also pretty beneficial to campus learners, as well. There's lot of times when a trip to campus is not feasible or actually when online service is more convenient. Students like to do business at hours when we're not open. So it's very convenient for them to be able to access the Web and conduct registration or drop/add, or order a transcript, anything that's available online when they are thinking about it. That's why online services are handy even to campus learners.

Slide: Enhancements to Student Services with an Integrated SIS

BILL: Here's some things that I think we're going to see more of in the future and that's the electronic signature and electronic authentication. Right now, students still have to come in and sign their promissory note in order to finish their financial aid or to get their loans, and we are seeing a lot of movement towards electronic signature which will let the student sign their promissory note electronically and therefore we can transfer funds electronically to their bank account or however else the system works for you. Electronic signature would let us allow students to order transcripts electronically and really moves us into another realm of service that we're still stuck on. Some written form, right now.

We're going to see systems communications with what we call "push messages" and "event triggers," so that if a student drops below a certain number of hours and that level is required for their financial aid eligibility or for their athletic eligibility or whatever you might define, you could send an electronic message to the student saying "Notice," or "Alert, your enrollment level is below the required for your financial aid," or whatever. We could even see it happening that, if a student registers for a class and the classroom location has changed or the time has changed, where we could send a notice to the students who are enrolled in the class to take note of the change.

PAT: And the system would do that automatically, wouldn't it, Bill? I mean, it wouldn't require human intervention at all to trigger the message. It would just be something that would happen in the system that would trigger that?

BILL: It would as you set this up, right.

PAT: That's pretty exciting.

BILL: Oh, I think it's got a lot of possibility and that's why it is an exciting time to be working in administrative systems right now. "What-if scenarios," such as degree audit. If a student is a major in sociology and they're thinking about changing to economics, you can do a what-if scenario and tell a student what the impact would be on their graduation date, or their courses needed. We're able to do a lot of that now manually, but as we see our student information systems supporting us, we're seeing more and more of that the student can do themselves.

Work flow and document flow let us communicate with each other as service providers about what's taken place with a student for their service. If the student has been in one department and talked to a financial aid counsellor and then they go to the cashier and the cashier can see that, you know, a commitment has been made or a promise or a discussion took place, and things can really tie together when you can use workflow and document flow in your student information systems. So we anticipate to see more of that as we go through some of our new system changes.

Slide: Lessons Learned

BILL: Well, Pat asked me to tell you what lessons I've learned as I've had my experience with student information systems and it's pretty simple. It always takes more time than we thought; it always takes more money; and more staff than we planned on. But in the end, when we see what we can provide as services to students, it's worth it. So I hope that what I've presented to you today has been useful and, if nothing else, it gets you thinking about how to use a student information system to personalize your student services and provide services online to students.

Slide: Resources Used for this Presentation

BILL: A couple of resources that I drew on are the Department of Education and its Family Policy Compliance Office —which has to do with the Privacy Office. They will issue interpretations and guidelines about privacy. AACRAO's website is a great source of information to AACRAO members and non-members alike, because you can find resources there, publications, and all of the work they do in their federal compliance. So it's a great resource, and I encourage you to go there.

Slide: Bill Haid, Executive Director of Enrollment Services
Colorado State University
william.haid@colostate.edu
970-491-2117

BILL: If you are interested in communicating with me or following up with me, here is a contact slide that tells you my e-mail address and my phone number. So I hope that it's been a useful presentation for you.

PAT: Bill, thank you very much. On behalf WCET and all of its members, we really appreciate your willingness to come and talk about this today. We started a project to create Web-based student services about two and a half years ago and at the time that we started, we really had no idea, I think, how much the student information system was involved in trying to create those services. And as we've continued to work with other campuses on similar projects, the questions about FERPA are always coming up. So, it's nice to have someone talk about that very specifically so we have a better understanding of it.

Slide: Resources Used for this Presentation

BILL: Pat, it's been my pleasure to do that. I just want to also mention that there are some very good resources on FERPA if you haven't already encountered them. AACRAO produces a very fine resource publication on FERPA and they even have an online tutorial for their members, if you are a member of AACRAO you can use an online tutorial and go through a FERPA lesson. But, besides AACRAO there's even some others folks that publish FERPA resources, so I promised that I would give that information to you, Sue, and we'll put it on the WCET Web page.

SUE: Yes, definitely. I'd like everybody to note a couple of things. This lecture has been recorded and it'll be available in an archive format on our website. I'm going to publish now our WCET website. Here you may access the Power Point slides that Bill has shown today, and you'll also have access to all the previous webcasts and archives. So please go to our website, and bookmark it, and check it out often.

Slide: This series is brought to you as part of WCET's work on its Learning Anywhere, Anytime Partnership Project

PAT: Well, thanks, Sue, for your help today and for keeping our website up to date with all of these great resources.

Slide: Next: April 13, 2002, Dan Volchok, WebCT Manager of Student Relations

PAT: Our next webcast will be on April 17th at noon, Mountain Time, and Dan Volchok, who I think has been attending today, will be making a presentation on Student Orientation, Providing An Online Component. Dan has done a lot of work in this area, a lot of research in this area, so it should be another great presentation and we're really looking forward to it.

Question: Please evaluate this HorizonLive Desktop Lecture

PAT: And now I'd like to ask if you'd just take a couple of minutes to provide us with some feedback about today's presentation. You should see an evaluation on your screen and, then, as soon as you've finished that evaluation, if you'd like to post some questions for Bill in the chat box, he said he'd willing to stick around here for another ten or fifteen minutes. So if you could just do the evaluation and then post your questions, we'll try to answer them.

SUE: Well, Bill, I have a question for you. Keyth, in the audience, asked about, "Well, aren't most undergraduates students dependents?" We're talking about distance students who are probably older students, as well, right?

BILL: Well, in fact, some institutions, and I have seen this more at the private schools than the public schools, but some institutions define undergraduates as dependent, so they automatically provide the access to parents. They're in fact fostering that relationship with parents and define the undergraduate students as dependent. And it depends on, you know, your student population. If you're an institution that has non-traditional students as undergraduates, you might not want to go there, and the public institutions I've worked at, I think we've chosen the more conservative direction on that question. And we've also not gone there to make an automatic definition. But certainly, you know, an eighteen-year-old, nineteen-year-old, twenty-year-old is most likely still dependent on their parents. So, parents don't have any difficulty establishing the access relationship.

SUE: But many of the distance students now are changing the demographics of students as a group, so probably many of the distance students who are older wouldn't automatically have dependent status.

BILL: Right. I think you have to be careful making that assumption.

SUE: Okay.

PAT: Well, Sue, do we have any more questions here from the audience?

SUE: That was the main one that I had noticed, watching the chat box. Although, Bill, you can feel good — there's lots of people have said thank you.

PAT: There is a question here from one individual. "If a student has requested directory information be suppressed, can it still be released to individuals who have a legitimate educational need?"

BILL: Yes, it may. Because you're basically, at that point, releasing personal and identifiable information, and that includes everything. So, if a person is getting access on the basis of the legitimate educational need, then, you're not restricting them from access to the directory information. But let's say that, a campus department is going to send a message or a mailing to students in its department and they want to promote a department event. There's a big speaker coming or something like that, and so they ask for the mailing address labels of all the students in their department. For that particular request, we would probably not give them the mailing address of a student who requested directory information be withheld, because it's a directory information request.

On the same hand, if that department said I need to contact all of my students who are graduating this year so that we can send them information about graduation, and a student on that list had requested directory information to be withheld, we would put their name on the list because it was for information about their graduation. So there's some judgment that takes place, but, the straight answer to the question is no.

PAT: Another question, Bill, and maybe you already discussed this and I just don't remember, I know you said that in your lessons learned, it always takes longer to convert to a new student information system than you expect. What's the typical length of time that it takes to do something like that?

Slide: Thank you for joining us.

BILL: Well, it depends on where you start counting, Pat. The implementation itself is typically — or maybe ideally — would be about twenty-four months. But if you consider how much time goes into planning and acquiring before you start the implementation, it could be two years before you start implementation. After you implement it, it could be another two years until you finish the implementation. So, a project like this could have a five- to six-year time frame again, depending on what you count as the project.

PAT: I see. And that must get very complex when you're trying to implement one that serves multiple institutions, like at a system level or something like that, I would think.

BILL: Well, that's just another factor to consider, and if you're trying to implement a system for a system, you've got to find the functional needs of all of the users. One campus is pretty complicated in itself, but add two or three other campuses in a system and you've multiplied the complexity.

PAT: Well, that would keep you busy for a few years, it sounds like. Okay, let's see. We have any more questions?

SUE: Keyth would like to know if you have any job openings at Colorado State?

BILL: Well, the Governor in Colorado signed an executive order a week ago putting a hiring freeze for all public positions. But higher ed was exempted about a few days into that because of some politicking that took place. So at least we don't have a hiring freeze.

PAT: That's good, because some states do.

BILL: Yes.

PAT: Okay, well, Bill, thank you very much once again. This was a great presentation today and I'm sure that people will be going back and listening to the archives because you so clearly explained the role of this SIS system and it'll be very helpful I think, to others, as they try to design personalized Web-based student services. And we look forward to seeing everyone on the next webcast.